The Main Nerve

One night about eighteen months ago, when I was in New Orleans working on an article for The New Yorker, I wandered into the Spotted Cat. The Cat is one of a half-dozen clubs on Frenchmen Street between Royal and Dauphine Streets. The music is almost always free. As for the beer, you can buy a to-go cup in one club and carry it into the others; so the block is like a miniature version of JazzFest, seven nights a week. Etiquette, however, dictates that you buy at least one drink in each bar, and I am nothing if not polite.

The Cat may have been the second or third bar I visited that night. Wailing on the tiny stage was a magical trio. Its centerpiece was a man singing the blues and doing things with a washboard and thimbles which I didn’t know could be done. Particularly enchanting was a hotel-desk bell, affixed to one side of his washboard, which added bright silver tones to his rasping, rhythmic strumming. Beside him sat a skinny man working the guts out of an old National guitar, and another honking on a harmonica.

As sometimes happens when drinking, I had a moment of transcendence. I thought, This is it! I have found it! I have my hand on the main nerve of New Orleans! Right here at this moment, Abita Amber sloshing out of my plastic cup and porkpie on my head, I am standing at the funnel tip of two centuries of New Orleans cultural history! I felt utterly transformed.

Returning to tranquil, immaculate Boulder, Colorado, was quite a comedown. The food was tasteless, and the long-haired folksingers droning sanctimonious dirges on Pearl Street, Boulder’s spotless downtown pedestrian mall, made me want to scream. My mind kept returning to that magical evening at the Spotted Cat. Finally, I told a friend about the incredible act I’d seen. I said, “I really think that I was plugged straight into the taproot of New Orleans culture.”